Tamta/later history

Tāmta continued to exist as a political entity in 4198 and the following years, but as its borders overlapped with other nations, its power waned as the male-led armies of the west grew in strength and acquired slaves.

Matrix-Slope relations

The Leapers and other armies had come to believe that the Matrixes were the strongest army in the world, and that the Slopes were interested in achieving a firm second place standing. Rather than defeating the Matrix or finding an uneasy alliance with the Matrix, the Slopes were interested in becoming the only other army in the world that the Matrix could not intimidate.

Matrixes prepare for war

The Matrix had by March 4198 taken hold of humanitarian rescue workers from Moonshine, mostly women.

Though avoiding a formal declaration of war for the time being, the Matrixes realized that by enslaving the Moonshine humanitarian rescue workers, they would likely soon face retaliation from Moonshine. They prepared their army to launch an invasion, as they preferred to be the aggressor in this war rather than the defender.

Matrix propaganda

The Matrixes used propaganda to improve their troops' confidence, as the Matrix soldiers knew that they were having difficulty even staying in power in their home city, and many thought that invading a foreign empire, even a pacifistic one, would be unwise.

The Matrixes identified themselves with male power, and they predicted that their traditional male-led army would be victorious over the female-led Moonshines by forcing its way into Moonshine territory and attacking the Moonshine capital city of Wōm. They claimed that although Moonshine's army was largely male, it was run by females, and would likely take a feministic approach to the war by allowing the Matrix army to slice its way deep into Moonshine territory and focus on trying to absorb the Matrixes rather than fighting them.

They pointed out that Moonshine was so exploitable that its own army, which consisted of enslaved humanitarian workers, was actually helping the Matrixes even while the Matrixes drew up plans for a war against them.

However, the Matrix generals felt that it would be wise to hold off on actually invading Moonshine for the time being, because they thought they could win an even greater victory against Moonshine if they were able to trigger Moonshine into being the aggressor. To do this, they made a formal declaration of war, but did not send out their army. Instead, they stated that they would treat the Moonshine humanitarian workers as prisoners of war and torture them in every way possible.

The new STW-Matrix coalition government announced their war by sending a team of diplomats into Moonshine territory to announce what they were doing in Baeba. The Matrixes told the Moonshines that they were now extending the demand for slave labor even to children. They openly announced to Moonshine that they were raping the Moonshine population held captive in Baeba, and that they would not stop, nor would they seek to punish any of the rapists. They declared that there could be no possible revenge for Moonshine here, and that the Matrixes would soon have their way with the Moonshine women even in Moonshine. The Matrixes declared that they preferred to enslave pacifistic people because they could rape the women without worrying about revenge attacks from the men.

When Moonshine's leaders heard that the Matrixes were raping and abusing Moonshine people in Baeba, they sent another troop of humanitarian workers into Baeba. The Matrixes were happy to see them and quickly put them into labor camps alongside the slaves that had been captured several years earlier. Moonshine had been hoping to rescue both the enslaved Moonshines and the wives and daughters of the Matrixes, who were also victims of abuse.

Matrix battle plans

Moonshine's avoidance of violence encouraged the Matrixes to invade preemptively after all, figuring that they would face little or no resistance even when they reached the Moonshine capital. In order to invade Moonshine, the Matrixes in Baeba Swamp would need to climb the very steep mountain range that marked Baeba's outer borders. This was easy, as even the Matrixes' enemies in the Swamp were concentrated in the lowlands.

But Baeba Swamp did not border Moonshine directly. Trade was possible because of a pair of conveniently located rivers, but both rivers required the cooperation of a third nation. Once they crossed the mountain range, they could sail down either the Nyufan (southern) or the Tănya (northern) River in order to reach Moonshine territory. Choosing the Tănya River would put them in Tata, their old homeland, in which they no longer had any power. Choosing the Nyufan would send them instead through Anzan, which was nominally under the control of the Swamp Kids but in fact had no secure government at all, as the Swamp Kids' historical enemies had overpowered them and begun to fight each other. Both nations were hostile to the Matrixes and friendly towards Moonshine, but the Matrixes believed that both nations would be no threat to their soldiers as they quickly passed through.

There were actually three separate states in Anzan that the Matrixes would have to cross through. The first was Tʷădu, the second Yīspʷilinâ, and the third Mikagu (Poise). Of these three, Yīspʷilinâ was the most racially diverse, meaning that there was a sizable minority of light-skinned people living there, whereas the other two states were composed almost entirely of dark-skinned people. The Matrixes thus figured they would have the best opportunity to set up forts in Yīspʷilinâ without being attacked, as they could pretend to be natives.

Once inside Moonshine, they would start heading uphill again, as Moonshine's capital city had been deliberately founded in a sheltered location. Since they would need to abandon their boats in order to proceed uphill, the Matrixes considered avoiding the rivers entirely and entering Moonshine territory on land. But using the rivers would give them the advantage of being able to prey on fish and other animals as they went, whereas they did not expect to find abundant wildlife in the forests. They realized that they could even prey on people, as any trading ships they happened to pass along the way would be either unarmed or very lightly armed, and therefore easily taken over.

Despite the relatively small distance between their two nations, the climates of Baeba and Wōm differed markedly. Baeba was tropical, and Wōm was snowbound for more than half of the year. The Matrixes did not want to attack in winter, as they realized they would be out of their element. However, they told their troops that their war, even in the best possible scenario, would likely last more than one year, and that the troops would need to learn how to survive in cold weather even so.

Lilypad report

Hearing this, the Lilypads warned that if the Matrixes invaded their territory and began assaulting them, the Lilypads would retaliate by sending rescue missions into Matrix territory to bring back the abused children the Matrixes had captured in previous raids.

Lilypads invade

In August 4199, having reached adulthood, the Lilypads marched westward and joined the war against the Matrix-STW coalition, seeking revenge for what had been done to them as children.

The Lilypads left their entire child population behind, saying that the Blue Cocoon would return to its original purpose as a safe colony for small children. Many of these children were less than five years old. However, although many young women had joined the coalition army, others stayed behind to care for the children, so the children were not as helpless as had been the Third and Fourth Classroom orphans.

The Lilypad army identified itself as the Tippers (Play Vaunas Pava) and stated that if the female Lilypads ever voted to stop the war, the Tippers would secede and become a sovereign nation of their own without children. They also began to state that the Lilypad name properly belonged to the young children only. The Tippers were still interested in adopting the Fourth Classroom orphans, who were intermediate in age, but believed that their primary goal was to stop them from being captured by the Matrix slavers, which would be even worse than orphanhood.

The Tipper army contained both men and women, but was predominantly male, as they felt most armies should be. The women had joined the army because they felt that winning the war was their nation's only goal, and that enough women had stayed behind to care for and protect the young Lilypad children. The Tippers thus resembled the Hipsides by sending women into a combat role, although they did not feel that they would be preyed upon for this reason as the many civilians caught in the battle were far more vulnerable.

Matrix invasion of Wōm

In fall 4199, the Matrix army began their long-planned invasion of Moonshine. They did not know that the Lilypads were at the very same time invading them, and the two groups had taken different routes, since it was easier for the Matrixes to go inland and easier for the Lilypads to hug the coast. Yet the Matrixes' route took them into the Lilypad territory of Tamta before they reached Moonshine proper; since their route did not intersect the Lilypad army's route, they had a clear path into Moonshine with no hostile armies in the way.

The Matrixes sailed down the Nyufan river and entered the Andanese state of Tʷădu. The government of Tʷadu had signed a treaty with Moonshine stating that the Tʷaduans would help Moonshine if they were invaded, but at this time Tʷadu's ruling party had no power over their own people and could not fend off the Matrix. The Matrixes, for their part, did not want Tʷadu to participate in the war and they tried to press through Tʷadu as quickly as possible. Within a few days, they had moved through Tʷadu and entered the state of Yīspʷilinâ.

In Yīspʷilinâ, they also found hostility, and realized that they would likely not be able to set up fortresses in Yīspʷilinâ's territory, as they had hoped to do. They thus quickly moved on to a state whose trade name was Mikagu (and whose native name was Poise). They planned to reach Moonshine territory so quickly that they could fight their war entirely within Moonshine, rather than needing to defend a battle front that was within Anzan. Even though Moonshine was more hostile towards the Matrixes than was Anzan, the Matrixes preferred to fight in Moonshine territory both because they believed that the Moonshine army was extremely weak and because they hoped that if they stayed out of Anzan, Anzan would stay out of the war.

Matrixes enter Lilypad territory

Then the Matrixes made it into Lilypad territory for the first time.

Matrixes enter Moonshine

Within weeks, the Matrixes cut through the Lilypad homelands and headed towards the Moonshine capital city of Wōm. However, in response, Moonshine finally attacked the Matrix troops with a traditional army rather than sending unarmed humanitarians to rescue wounded soldiers even of the Matrixes. The war began to turn in Moonshine's favor, but this was mostly due to outside help rather than because of Moonshine's temporary suspension of absolute pacifism. A coalition army formed in Tʷădu, and another one formed in Poise. The first army attacked the Matrix-STW coalition in Baeba Swamp while the second army moved north to help protect Moonshine.

Matrix war strategy

Because of mikagu's counterattack, the Matrix soldiers were surrounded on all sides, and had no hope spread into of establishing contact with baeban2matrixes. .

The Matrixes used propaganda extensively to improve their soldiers' resolve. They stated that there were no men in Moonshine; Moonshine women were very feminine and Moonshine men were even more so. Many Matrix soldiers in this war had also participated in an earlier war against the Swamp Kids where similar propaganda was used. Although the Swamp Kids had won that war, they had sustained a far higher body count than the Matrixes did, and only began to win once they secured the help of many allies.

The Matrix generals promised their soldiers that, once they had eliminated most of Moonshine's traditional male army, they would be facing an entirely female nation, and that despite their strongly feministic belief system, the Moonshine women would be so enraptured by the sight of a strong man that they would forgive the Matrixes for invading and submit themselves completely to Matrix rule.

Privately, though, the Matrixes envied both the Moonshines and the Swamp Kids. The Matrixes noticed that men in Moonshine seemed to readily admit that they were weak, and identified themselves with smallness and other childlike attributes, leaving their women to stand tall as the true picture of their society. Moonshine women, meanwhile, were proud of their femininity; the stereotypical Moonshine woman had large breasts and wide hips, a body type that was seen as embarrassing by the women of the Matrixes. Moonshine men even went so far as to boast of their own feminine attributes, though admitting that they were much less noticeable than those of their women. In essence, all Moonshines were feminine: the women were extremely feminine, and the men were somewhat less feminine, but both sexes were on the same side of the divide.

Meanwhile, the Matrixes were jealous of the Swamp Kids for a similar reason. The Swamp Kids had a very masculine culture, but their men were physically small and they referred to themselves as "boys" rather than men, and did not seem to be ashamed of this, nor envious of the more robust figures of the men of the Matrixes. Thus, the Matrixes had a difficult time intimidating the Swamp Kids, and attempts to befriend their women proved fruitless.

Final battles

The Matrixes defeated the young soldiers by January 4202, at the Battle of Papilalapapi (an Andanese name, not a Play name). Then they launched the War of the Sexes by invading the women who had stayed behind in the refugee colony of Hoki. The Matrixes promised to kill many women, enslave the rest, and then invade Moonshine to continue their war.

By January 4202, the Matrixes had won their war against Moonshine, meaning that Moonshine could no longer rescue the humanitarian aid workers trapped in Baeba's territory. The Matrixes still had other enemies to fight off in Baeba, but Moonshine had been driven out and would not return for hundreds of years.

The Matrixes took control of all of the land between Baeba Swamp and the Moonshine border, and they signed a treaty with STW and the Swamp Kids declaring that the Matrix army was the legal owner of all of the land in Anzan, Tata, and Dreamland. This was more than 90% of the land in the world, and the Matrixes were not planning to actually spread out over all of this land; they merely wanted legal recognition that any non-Matrix army in any of the four countries would be considered an illegal uprising. (Anzan included Lobexon, and was now also referred to as Erala, Rapala, or Paptubia.) However, the Matrixes did execute a genuine occupation of Tata, which had been their former base of power, and was in a convenient location which the Matrixes felt they might need to use if they were pushed out of Baeba.

The Matrixes signed a peace treaty with Moonshine promising to never again invade their territory, and decided to celebrate their treaty by invading deeper into Moonshine territory. They told their soldiers that their dream had finally come true; they had violated and subdued a nation run entirely by women, and those women were now their property. The Matrixes had killed and abducted so many Moonshine males that the remaining able-bodied adult population was almost entirely female, many of whom only learned from the Matrixes that their husbands had died.

However, the Matrixes were now more interested in dominating the refugee safehouse of Xómeye, into which many escaped slaves had fled, than in dominating Wōm. The Matrixes won at first, but later on, the other inhabitants of Xómeye stopped stabbing each other and united as one to kick out the Matrix. Once the Matrix had been chased out, the people of Xómeye started killing each other again. Another peace treaty was signed, with both sides expecting another war would soon erupt.

Matrixes in Moonshine territory

The Matrixes wanted to establish parasitic colonies in rural Moonshine territory. They had adopted this idea from the Raspara party, which had parasitically colonized the empire of the Swamp Kids a few generations earlier. However, the Matrix plan was more difficult than the Raspara plan for several reasons:

1. The Swamp Kids had always welcomed minorities in their empire, and in much of their territory, the Swamp Kids were a minority. Thus, the Swamp Kids could not tell apart a citizen from an invader on sight. By contrast, outside of the state of Xómeye, Moonshine territory was entirely walled off to all non-Moonshines; outsiders could not even visit Moonshine territory unless accompanied by Moonshine officials. The Matrixes, despite being a political party whose members came from diverse racial types, did not physically resemble the Moonshines, and could not disguise themselves as Moonshines.
2. The Raspara party was able to exploit the fact that the Swamp Kids were physically small and frail people, even to the point of calling their adult males "boys" and forcing the Swamp Kids to address Raspara men with separate adult-male pronouns. Often, an entire room of Swamp Kids would stop talking if just a single Raspara male entered their company, as they were all afraid they were about to be kidnapped. By contrast, the Moonshine people were only slightly more frail than the Matrixes, and had no fear of the Matrixes.
3. The Matrixes were in perpetual danger of being pushed out of power in their own territory, and could not afford to waste valuable manpower on an invasion of Moonshine when they needed their military to keep them in power at home. However, the Matrix leaders promised that if they were indeed thrown out of power in Baeba Swamp, they would invade Moonshine rather than trying to win back Baeba Swamp.

Relations with STW

At this point, Baeba was governed by a coalition of the Matrixes and STW, with the Matrixes in control. However, STW had an independent army, and this army sometimes fought battles against its enemies without asking for help from the Matrix. Moonshine hoped that in the future, STW might become the stronger partner of the coalition, and force the Matrixes to back down from their brutal slavery operations. However, it seemed that as STW grew, its own slavery operations were becoming more and more like those of the Matrix, and in some cases were even worse.

Further relations with the Matrixes

However, a surprising turn of events brightened the situation for Moonshine beginning in the summer of 4202. The Crystals had worked out a peace treaty with the Matrixes which gave them very little but the promise that the Matrixes wouldn't simply kill them off. This treaty was of a type that had traditionally meant the creation of a coalition government, but the Matrixes gave the Crystals no power and did not even free their slaves. Their only promise was that the Crystals would be allowed to live. This meant that Moonshine humanitarian workers could once again move to Baeba Swamp and help people there without being killed on sight.

Crystal party split

At this point, an unrelated internal struggle split Baeba's Crystal party into two mutually hostile entities: FILTER and the Phoenixes. FILTER was named after a feminist organization, FILTER, that had existed long ago in nearby areas, but was not actually derived from it. FILTER soon declared itself to be the true Crystal party and its members began calling themselves Crystals.

In response, the Phoenixes signed an alliance with the Rasparas, who were members of a party that had lived parasitically in Swampy territory for about 50 years, toying with Swampy politicians and soldiers at their will, before being defeated and forced into minor party status. The Rasparas admired the idea of a female-led party that shared its political enemies.

The other Crystals were afraid to sign an agreement with men, particularly men of a group that had historically oppressed outside groups and declared that the adult males of their oppressed people were merely boys and not men.

They also pointed out that the Rasparas were close cousins of the Matrixes, who were famous for their use of offensive sexual imagery, such as firing arrows at women's breasts for target practice. The Matrixes did not even allow females to identify as Matrixes, as they felt that only men should have opinions on politics. The Matrixes killed their wives when they became too old to bear children, and said that it was sometimes allowable for a man to kill a woman who was disfigured by an injury and no longer attractive. Moreover the Matrixes had in 4188, just a few years earlier, betrayed their ally, the Swamp Kids, by signing a military peace treaty and then invading the Swampies' army from behind. However, the Phoenixes insisted that the Raspara were not as evil as the Matrixes.

Because the Matrixes consisted entirely of males, whereas the Moonshines allowed only women to hold power, all meetings between Matrix and Moonshine diplomats were contests of males against females. The Matrixes believed that casual violence against women was acceptable, and told the Moonshine diplomats that the Matrix diplomats might assault the visiting Moonshines to help win a difficult argument.

4202 war

Moonshine's pacifist war council declared that it was impossible for a war to erupt in a refugee colony and therefore that the Matrixes' invasion could be handled by the Lilypad women's police force.

Slope rule

The Slopes by this time were the only one of the original children's parties that still had a strong army with territory all to itself.

They were the only party that had achieved all of its major objectives:

1. They had reproduced within their group, rather than by forcing unwilling Crystal women to be their wives. There had always been more boys than girls in the Slope party, but the Slope girls did not complain of reproductive overwhelm as they grew into women.
2. They had adopted tens of thousands of young children, with men taking on much of the parenting duties rather than forcing the women to do it all.
3. They had captured many Crystal slaves.
4. They had avoided a direct attack from any other parties of their generation (the tatea generation).
5. They had entirely avoided ideological splits, even as parties like the Matrix had divided and then divided again into ever smaller factions.
6. They had made converts of those in enemy parties.
7. They had driven out adult armies such as the Zeniths from their territory.
8. They had driven out other top-tier armies, the ones who had just years earlier described the Slopes as children who huddled together in castles at night quivering in fear of the world around them.
9. They had gained territory in Baeba Swamp, which they had previously not felt possible.
10. They had been legally recognized by the Leapers in Baeba Swamp, and held a large fraction of the seats in the Leaper Parliament, showing that they had won the support of the people despite their violent history.
11. They had defied the predictions of many traditional powers who had stated that even if the Slopes were to achieve undeserved success, they were bound by shared childhood experiences and would therefore lose their sense of community as they became adults who had little in common.

The Slopes had changed little in ideology or lifestyle in their eight years of existence. They still obeyed many laws that seemed intended for children, and stated that this was because they had adopted so many young children from outside groups that such laws were still needed. They saw no end to this situation, and continued to laugh at other male-led parties who believed that raising other men's children was an act of submission.

Šapei Napabapei

Both the Cold Men and the Leashes still existed in 4206, as did the Scorpions. It was only at this point that the Cold Men banned the Leash party and created the Šapei Napabapei school system, which promised children to re-enter the war against the Players as they still considered Play territory their only true homeland.

At this point the Cold Men (or the Leashes) declared that they had "no country" left.

STW reappears

STW was still a strong military force by this time; see STW#Wars_against_the_Dolls.

Pineapple rule

The Lilypads reformed their government as they achieved unquestioned power over Moonshine's refugee state of Hōki, and declared a formal secession from Moonshine applying to not only the Lilypads but to the indigenous population, some of whom were descended from refugees who had fled into Hōki hundreds of years earlier. These people were now merely captives of the Lilypads. The Lilypad rulers set up a democracy for these people, in which everyone except Lilypads could vote, but Lilypads were the only candidates for all offices. Thus, the Lilypads gave them no choice but to accept captive rule, but would listen to suggestions about how to run their occupied territories. Many of these refugees did not speak Play, and the Lilypads made it clear to them that if they did not understand the issues, their own fellow citizens would be against them if they voted randomly, since it would disrupt the elections. These people thus were allowed to assign their votes to a trusted fellow citizen, meaning that those citizens who spoke Play could acquire disproportionate voting power. The Play word for such a person was ŋaupeifua, a proxy voter. This system had been used before in many small towns where the entire citizenry agreed to vote the same way on all issues, and sent a single person to vote with the power of the entire town's population.

The Lilypads stated that their new nation, the Habitat (LPD-4), would focus on children's issues that they had grown up fighting for from the other side of the generation gap. They praised the Players for having remained committed to the welfare of children for their entire existence, and promised to do the same. Like the Players, the new Lilypads (calling themselves Pineapples but with a different word than the usual Play word) were nationalists, so their endorsement of Play politics was not an endorsement of the Play nation or its vast and bloody military gains in recent years.

They promised to build a school system to educate the youth. They stated that because an entire generation (the Deer Walkers) had missed out on education, adults of that generation could also attend school, but they encouraged the Deer Walkers to seek jobs that did not require education. This meant that the Lilypads expected to promote the even younger generation, who called themselves the Slimes (Play Tūuvām) into power before promoting Deer Walkers, and they realized that they were facing a similar situation to what had occurred in their own youth when the first children's parties emerged from a rebellion against the tiny adult male elite. This was also the first time that the Lilypads allowed people of other generations to hold power.

Campfire rule

The fifth Lilypad government was called the Campfires (LPD-5). They pivoted back towards wide-reaching politics instead of focusing on children's issues, saying that the Pineapple government had done many good things but that the children who had grown up as Pineapples had little interest to pursue since they were expected to be focused on the next generation. They stated they would not neglect the new generation, but that they would ensure their family cohesion would keeps generational bonds together.

By this time Moonshine had not only given up hope of reconquering Hōki, but had decided to shut off all refugees and all immigration, saying that refugees only harmed other refugees.

The Clover tribe

At the dawn of the Cosmopolitan Age, many of the Cold soldiers remained in the west and joined a tribe calling itself the Clovers. These people had named themselves after the children who had ruled the Clover kingdom, and some were direct descendants, but these Clovers were a traditional ethnic group ruled by adults and self-sufficient within their small mountain territory.

A small number of Cold Men moved back to the east to live in the wilderness, and soon lost their political identity along with any concept of a unitary nation-state. Thus, they too became a tribe, and over time this tribe became a collection of tribes.